Among the Trees

Chapter 22 - Laura

I stepped in the door and Lee launched himself off the stairs and threw his arms around me. One securely around my shoulders while his other hand held onto my head. I wrapped my arms round his waist in return, burying my face in his shoulder. I took a deep breath through my nose. Breathing his scent. I never wanted to lose what I felt in this moment. I had felt this only when my father had held me in a similar manner. I felt my heart swell in my chest, beating so hard I feared it might leap from my chest. I didn't want him to let go of me and never wanted to lose this feeling.

"Lee?" I spoke in almost a whisper. "Lee, I think," I paused and pulled away from him slightly, so that I could look him in the eye, "I think I'm falling in love with you." I looked down and held my breath. I felt for certain that I'd just messed this up.

"You think? Or you know?" His question was not what I had been expecting. My eyes shot back up to his. "Because I know I'm not falling, but I have fallen, in love with you Lily. None of this," he placed a hand on my still flat stomach, "will change that."

"Do," I paused for a second, "do you really mean that?" Lee smiled and it looked as though he were going to say something, when stumbled through the door looking completely bewildered. Her bewilderment turned to annoyance when she saw Lee and I, and lee's hand shot away from my stomach.

"So you two are in here canoodling, while we're being stormed by like half of what was left of Adam's pack. Nice to know." She glance back over her shoulder to the door. "Oh and if we live through whatever this is, I expect you to tell me what's really going on with you two." She scowled for a moment. Her scowl soon turned to confusion as the thundering footsteps were replaced by a thundering on the front door behind her. I looked down at my watch and smiled.

"Let them in, lead them all to the attic. They've arrive with plenty of time to question them all. Can't let any of Adam's spies in now, can we?"

It took us three and a half hours to talk to twenty odd people. We came across only one that refused to talk.

"We have to send his back." Betty spoke up first. It was futile trying to whisper around him, he was a wolf, he'd hear us anyway.

"That's too simple Bet." Lee shook his head at his childhood friend.

"For once, he's right." All three of us turned to glare at the man bound to the chair. "That's too simple. Besides, if you send me back now, I'll just tell him about that little unborn baby you carry." His grin was sly and wry, and his eyes looked as though they held the secrets to a great many evils.

"No. Betty's right. We have to send him back." The menace in his grin grew as he heard what I'd said.

"Then Adam will be pleased." I responded to his sly grin with a sweet smile of my own.

"Oh, whoever said you were going back in one piece?" His face dropped, his grin vanished and so did his colour. His hair and eyes were a perfect match to Lee's. The only difference between the two was their age and their build, but the devastation on Lee's face when he had refused to comply could have meant only one thing. The man sat before us was Lee's older brother, Tyler. For a moment I was almost certain I had heard Lee's heart stop.

"Take his hand off." My smile vanished and so did the colour in Lee's face. Lee began to protest but I quickly and loudly cut him off. "Unless you can come up with a safer way to let him go, this is how it has to be."

"Lily he's my brother!" There was a dead silence for a moment. He was right. This was his brother, there was no way in hell he'd left me take his brother to pieces.

"Then find a way to keep him quiet." Lee nodded and that wry, sly smile returned to Tyler's face. "I'm going to give Clarissa a bath."

Being with the small girl somehow had a calming effect on my entire being. Her big green eyes soothing every fear in my mind, as though even her tiny mind could reach out and see just what I needed. With every inch of me, I wanted to hate her but somehow I couldn't. This girl was pure and innocent and completely clear of her father's mistake.

"You almost had a brother or a sister." I whispered, smiling sadly down at the girl. "But then I did something silly and now you won't have a sibling. You will however have a cousin." I rolled my eyes, wiped away tears I hadn't realised had fallen and sniffled. "Why can't I hate you?" Clarissa simply smiled up at me.

"Because she's a child Lily." Lee's voice stunned me somewhat. I hadn't been expecting him to be here.

"How much of that did you hear?"

"All of it." Lee wrapped his arms around my waist and kissed my shoulder as I continued to sniffle. "She's tired Lily. Go put her in the cot and we can go back to Tyler." I nodded, picking her up.

By the time we got back Tyler, he was no longer tied down and his sly grin had gone.

"How did he manage to rope you in to all this Tyler? Because if your brother is anything to go by, the men in your family are stubborn mules."

"That we are Miss Franklin, but he made an offer I couldn't refuse. He told me this was how to get close to Laura." Laura? There was no Laura here. I didn't even think I knew a Laura. "Laura Palmer. The girl your brother took from me." Suddenly I remembered. Remembered the way my brother had practically glowed when he brought her home to. Meet our parents, the way she had asked me to dye her luscious blonde hair a coppery auburn, and the way she sat beside my brother after his accident.

"No one is anyone, is anyone's property Tyler. Laura made her choice and she didn't choose you." Laura was a sweet girl, with a heart of gold, while Tyler, on the other hand, was a vile monster with only vengeance on his mind.